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Tommaso Astarita Naples Was One of the Largest Cities in Early Modern INTRODUCTION: “NAPLES IS THE WHOLE world” Tommaso Astarita Naples was one of the largest cities in early modern Europe and, for about two centuries, the largest city in the global empire ruled by the kings of Spain. Its crowded and noisy streets, the height of its buildings, the num- ber and wealth of its churches and palaces, the celebrated natural beauty of its location, the many antiquities scattered in its environs, the fiery volcano looming over it, the drama of its people’s devotions, and the size and liveliness—to put it mildly—of its plebs all made Naples renowned and at times notorious across Europe. The new essays in this volume aim to introduce this important, fasci- nating, and bewildering city to readers unfamiliar with its history. In this introduction, I will briefly situate the city in the general history of Italy and Europe and offer a few remarks on the themes, topics, and approaches of the essays that follow. The city of Naples was founded by Greek settlers in the 6th century BC (although earlier settlements in the area date to the 9th century). Greeks, Etruscans, and, eventually, Romans vied for control over the city during its first few centuries. After Rome absorbed the southern areas of the Ital- ian Peninsula, Naples followed the history of the Roman state; however, through much of that era, it maintained a strong Greek identity and cul- ture. (Nero famously chose to make his first appearance on the stage in Naples, finding the city’s Greek culture more tolerant than stern Rome of such behavior.) Perhaps due to its continued eastern orientation, Naples developed an early Christian community. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, Naples and all of southern Italy were ruled in succession by Goths, Byzantines, and Lombards. In the late first millennium, Naples had its own independent dukes. The southern Italian kingdom as a distinct political entity was created by the Normans in the early 12th century, as part of their far-flung con- quests which took them, roughly in the same period, from their settle- ment in northern France to England, southern Italy, and the Levant. In 1130 Roger “the Norman” was crowned King of Sicily in Palermo after his Tommaso Astarita - 9789004251830 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:08:16AM via free access 2 tommaso astarita family had for nearly a century gradually established dominion over the fragmented Byzantine, Arab, and Lombard powers that had ruled in Sicily and in the peninsula south of Rome. The new kingdom was soon recog- nized by the papacy and placed in fact in a formal relationship of feudal dependency from the papacy that was to last through the late 18th cen- tury. The kingdom consisted of the island of Sicily and of the southern regions of Calabria, Puglia, Basilicata, Abruzzo, and Campania. Its only land boundary, with the papal state, was to change remarkably little for seven centuries, until the creation of the kingdom of Italy in 1861. This remarkable period of territorial stability belies the kingdom’s tumultuous political history. Sicily and the southern regions were indeed ruled by a confusing suc- cession of European dynasties; when the Normans died out in the 1190s, they were succeeded by the Swabians, at the time the German impe- rial dynasty. In the first half of the 13th century, Frederick II—the Holy Roman emperor and king of Sicily and Jerusalem—dominated European affairs from his beloved southern Italian realm. Though Frederick’s capital remained formally in Palermo, the emperor began the modern develop- ment of Naples, where he founded a university in 1224, the first one in Europe primarily dedicated to the training of secular administrators for the royal government. The hostility between the Swabians and the papacy led the latter to seek an alternative ruler for the southern kingdom, and in 1266 Charles of Anjou, brother of King Louis IX of France, conquered the kingdom with papal support. In 1282 a rebellion in Sicily—the famous Vespers of Romantic lore—severed the island (henceforth ruled by a branch of the Aragonese royal family) from the mainland regions of the kingdom, which the Angevins now ruled from their new capital in Naples. From that date until 1816, Sicily and Naples (the city’s name eventually became the new name for the mainland kingdom as a whole) remained formally separate kingdoms, though after 1500 they were usually ruled by the same monarch. Naples grew under Angevin rule, gaining population and a new appear- ance thanks to the construction of castles and many churches in the French Gothic style favored by the dynasty. When the Angevin line in Naples died out in the 1430s, Naples and its kingdom were conquered by Alfonso of Aragon (already king of Aragon, Sardinia, and Sicily), who made the city the capital of his Mediterranean realm and a major center of Humanist studies and Renaissance art. At Alfonso’s death in 1458, the Aragonese king- dom and the two islands passed to his brother, but Alfonso claimed the right to leave Naples, as a kingdom he had conquered and not inherited, Tommaso Astarita - 9789004251830 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:08:16AM via free access introduction: “naples is the whole world” 3 to Ferrante, his illegitimate son. Ferrante and his successors ruled until 1501, but in the 1490s they became embroiled in the Italian wars, a series of conflicts that brought French, German, and Spanish armies to the pen- insula in a struggle that soon became central in the battle for achieving European hegemony. Two years of an uneasy Spanish and French occupation of southern Italy ended with the Spanish victory over French troops in 1503, which gave the Kingdom of Naples to Ferdinand, king of Aragon, Sardinia, and Sicily and husband of Queen Isabella of Castile. Naples thus lost its resi- dent monarchy, and under Ferdinand (and then under his and Isabella’s successors) Spanish viceroys governed the city and its kingdom for over two centuries. This is when Naples’s remarkable population growth really took off: over the 16th century the city grew from an estimated 50,000 inhabitants to about 200,000, and by 1600 Naples was by far the largest city in Italy. Indeed, with Paris and London, it had become one of the largest cities in Christian Europe. Masses of the rural poor flocked to Naples, attracted by cheap bread and lower taxes; provincial elites and feudal nobles joined them, seeking proximity to the viceregal court and government and access to the cultural activities, social life, and political opportunities offered by the city. Merchants, administrators, diplomats, soldiers, and clerics also came to Naples from all the Spanish dominions, as well as other parts of Italy and Europe; by the 1630s it was plausible for a city administrator to write that Naples “was the whole world.”1 Under the veneer of stable Spanish rule in the 17th century, the King- dom of Naples faced some of its greatest challenges, both natural and man- made. The 1631 eruption of Vesuvius brought damage and death up to the city’s gates. (It was then that San Gennaro, believed to have spared the city from destruction, became the most popular of Naples’s growing ros- ter of patron saints; by 1731 there were thirty-five.) The dramatic revolt of 1647–48 produced casualties and devastation across the kingdom. Finally, in 1656 the greatest plague epidemic since the 14th century struck the city, killing about half of its population (which by then numbered somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 inhabitants). In the wake of such devasta- tion, Naples remained by far the largest city in Italy, although it would not fully regain its pre-plague population until the late 18th century. In spite of these calamities, 17th-century Naples was a major center of art and architecture, filled with magnificent churches, royal buildings, and 1 Capaccio, Forastiero, 940. Tommaso Astarita - 9789004251830 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:08:16AM via free access 4 tommaso astarita aristocratic palaces, and its musical, literary, and intellectual life grew in variety and quality. The Spanish Habsburgs’ rule over the kingdom remained more or less secure even during the monarchy’s declining decades under Charles II (1665–1700), but the succession wars of the early 18th century eventually brought about dynastic change. In 1707 Spanish rule was replaced by Aus- trian rule (still enforced through viceroys) and in 1734 Charles of Bourbon, younger son of the king of Spain, conquered the kingdom and ruled it on his own, adding Sicily the following year. When Charles succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1759, he took his older son and heir to Spain but left his younger son, Ferdinand IV, as autonomous ruler of Naples and Sicily. The Naples Bourbons ruled until Italian unification in 1861, though they lost the mainland kingdom to revolutionary forces for a brief period in 1799 and to Napoleonic control from 1806 to 1815. After over two centuries of government through viceroys, the return of a resident monarchy in 1734 brought major developments to Naples, not only in terms of demographic and, though at a slower pace, also economic growth but also with regard to cultural and social life. The king became the center of an increasingly splendid court and elite life; the monarchy built new palaces, theaters, and other impressive public buildings, and it sponsored developments in scholarship, music, and the arts. The archeo- logical discoveries of the 1730s and 1740s at Herculaneum and Pompeii, also facilitated by royal support, added to the attractions of Naples and its area.
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